大象传媒

Chapter 1 鈥� The 鈥楶honey War鈥�.

When I have sometimes talked about the War (and I mean of course World War Two) you have several times said to me, Rosemary, 鈥淲hy don鈥檛 you write it down Daddy?鈥� So here I am with fingers, at least two of them, poised over keyboard ready to go and wondering just how far I will get before I decide it really is beyond me.

I suppose it all started for me in January 1939 when, still sixteen, I joined the Territorial Army. You really had to be seventeen but I lied about my age and if you ask me why, I really don鈥檛 know; it is after all sixty-five years ago, but I guess that if pressed I would say that it was a consequence of listening to my father regaling me with stories of his time in the Army during the Boer War, the Great War and the quasi-army of the Royal Irish Constabulary. I had left school the previous July having matriculated; the equivalent of today鈥檚 O-Levels. Not so many went on to Higher School Certificate (A-Levels) in those days and none but the children of the wealthy, or the particularly bright, went to university. I suppose I might have made it but my parents had just moved to Bedford from Dorchester and weren鈥檛 well off enough to pay for me to remain at school as a boarder; indeed I have every reason to be grateful to them for seeing to it that I did at least enjoy a grammar school education. And so I became 鈥�895451 Gunner Hulse鈥� in the Bedfordshire Yeomanry.

I don鈥檛 remember much about what we did on the weekly evening parades during the time between my enlisting and the late summer of 1939; lots of 鈥榮quare-bashing鈥� and rifle drill I suppose, but I do remember going to summer camp in July of that year at Shoreham in Sussex (near Brighton). We were supposed to be a Field Regiment, Royal Artillery equipped with 25 pounder field guns but we never did get these whilst I was with the Regiment, even after the War had started. After camp, which served, of course, as my summer holiday, I went back to my job for a few weeks before war was declared. This, the job that is, was as a very junior clerk in the Treasurer鈥檚 Department of the Bedfordshire County Council. I had actually started work the previous September in the Education Department at the princely salary of 拢40 a year, that is just 75p a week, but it wasn鈥檛 really the job I wanted and when the opportunity occurred I was glad to transfer to finance, at the same salary, and so start a career that was to take me to retirement.

In August of 1939 everyone knew that war was inevitable and that it was only a matter of time and so those of us that had joined the voluntary armed services, for the men the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve (RNVR), the Territorial Army (TA), or the Royal Air Force Voluntary Reserve (RAFVR) and for the women the Women鈥檚 Royal Naval Service (WRNS or 鈥榃rens鈥�), the Auxiliary Territorial Army (ATS) or the Women鈥檚 Auxiliary Air Force (WAAFs), were not very much surprised when in the afternoon of Friday 1st September an announcement was made on the wireless (radio) that all members of the armed forces were to report to their units immediately. So, we did just that; put down our pens and saws and shovels and walked out of our places of employment. In the case of the Shire Hall of the County of Bedfordshire I reckon that approaching half of the staff had joined up in the months preceding the War. In later years when I was myself running a large finance department I often wondered how those that were left coped with the workload. How, for instance, did everybody get paid the following Friday? But at the time the thought never entered into our heads. We were off to the War and an exciting prospect that was indeed.

My Battery of the Beds Yeomanry had its Headquarters in Ashburnham Road, Bedford which wasn鈥檛 far from where we lived so it didn鈥檛 take me long to get home, pick up a few things and report to the Drill Hall. There the first thing that happened was for us to be given our 鈥榚mbodiment money鈥� in the shape of a five pound note. Oh what a lovely thing that was to behold! Printed in classic copper plate script on about A5 sized crinkly white banknote paper and bearing the legend 鈥淏ANK OF ENGLAND I promise to pay the bearer, on demand, the sum of 拢5 five pounds鈥�, you really did feel as if you had some money when you had one of those in your hand. For me, and no doubt many others, it was particularly memorable because I had never before possessed so much money that was my very own. We also received a ten shilling note (50p, and called a Bradbury because the first ones issued bore the signature of the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England whose name it was) for our 鈥榥ecessaries鈥�. These were things like boot brushes and toilet articles which would have been issued to us if we were joining the Army as regular soldiers. Our feeling of great wealth was merely transient of course and we came down to earth with a bump on the following Friday when at the weekly pay parade we received our first weeks army pay, seven days at two shillings a day, that is just fourteen shillings or seventy pence. And those who were married had to make what was called a 鈥榗ompulsory allotment鈥� to their wives so they got just 35 pence!

Friday 1st September ended with those of us who lived locally being told to go home and report for duty the next day.

The next day, 2nd September, was in fact my seventeenth birthday but is quite over shadowed in my memory by the event of the following day, 3rd September 1939, when we gathered round our wirelesses to hear the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, declare that Great Britain was formally at war with Germany. I think it was immediately after that that we were paraded to be assigned to our new duties and I recall that my first job was to man a Lewis machine gun on the roof of the Drill Hall with two very large soldiers indeed, who had both served as regular soldiers in the Grenadier Guards. I suppose we were the anti-aircraft defence of Battery Headquarters though it is a good thing we were never attacked as we would have been unlikely to have hit anything, as the Lewis gun was a leftover from the Great War and notoriously prone to jam at the slightest provocation. And so the weeks went by and we were still an artillery battery without guns though we did have a couple of old eighteen pounders, also from the WW1 (World War One 鈥� The Great War), which we used to practice gun drill but which couldn鈥檛 have been fired without disastrous results for the gun crews as the recoil mechanism was so rusted up that the gun would probably have shattered. We did hear that one of our sister batteries had received four out of its complement of eight guns but they didn鈥檛 have them for very long because in October the news came through that the Regiment was to be sent to Belgium to join the British Expeditionary Force (the BEF) and they were not to have field guns anyway but 9.2 Howitzers also from WW1!. Then about twenty of us were told that we were too young to accompany the Regiment. Disappointing news at the time but perhaps it was just as well because the Regiment did no more than get the guns concreted in on the Belgium border and ready for action when the Maginot Line was turned by the enemy and they had to beat a hasty retreat to Dunkirk. Meantime we youngsters, known much to our disgust as 鈥榠mmatures鈥�, had been posted to join an Anti Aircraft Regiment in South Yorkshire.

Chapter 2 鈥楳exborough, Yorkshire鈥�.

Our new regiment was a converted infantry Battalion of the York and Lancs Light Infantry with its regimental headquarters in Rotherham and the headquarters of the battery to which we had been posted in Mexborough. Neither of these towns had much to commend them at that time and in fact they were quite awful. Looking back I don鈥檛 recall being depressed although we might well have been because we still had no guns to bolster our sense of pride in being men of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. This is the oldest of our military formations and were the British Army ever to be drawn up on parade the Royal Artillery would occupy the proud position of being the 鈥榬ight of the line鈥�. But there we were with little to do but attend endless parades, perform fatigues and guard duties and, worst of all when day was done retire to our beds which consisted of three blankets and a groundsheet on the hard wooden floor of the Drill Hall; no beds and not even mattresses. We went out very little because even in those days fourteen bob (shillings) a week didn鈥檛 go very far and I well remember four of us who were pretty close friends emptying our pockets onto a blanket to see if we could muster enough to go to a pub and have half a pint of beer each. Pay parade was on Thursday and it was following these that I became aware of the Yorkshire man鈥檚 love of gambling. The older men, most of them married, would take their pay, all thirty-five pence of it into the canteen, sit at a table with a drink and play a card game called 鈥榖lind three card brag鈥� until one of their number had the lot or at least most of it. Then the others would sub (borrow) from him until next week.

Most of us spent our evenings polishing our brass buttons and our boots and leather cap straps and blancoing our belts and gaiters, because this was before the 鈥榖attle dress鈥� uniform had been introduced. We wore tunics with brass buttons and brass insignia on the epaulets, green canvas belts with brass fittings and green canvas gaiters above black boots which had to be polished until one could see one鈥檚 face in them. On our heads we wore a peaked cap with leather hatband and the Royal Artillery brass hat badge which consists of a scroll bearing the regiment鈥檚 motto 鈥楿bique Quo Fas et Gloria Ducunt鈥� (Everywhere where honour and glory leads) and surmounted by the emblem of an artillery piece.

The majority of the men were South Yorkshire colliers from local pits at Wath-on-Dearne and Swinton collieries. They were pretty basic but on the whole kind to us young boys from the South and many of those who lived locally would from time to time invite us to their homes, mostly back to back cottages, and I think they did this sometimes partly to show us off because we were different in that we had funny accents. Of course we thought they had funny accents too and one realises now how modern transport and methods of communication have narrowed the gap between the north and the south of the country. We also became quickly conditioned to the way in which the English language could be liberally sprinkled with swearwords. In recent years we have had to become accustomed to the use of obscenities but I can assure you that the British soldier has long employed the 鈥榝鈥� word and others like it, with the greatest facility. One example that sticks in my mind was the occasion of a church parade when the Sergeant Major leant over the back of a pew and with mouth close to an unsuspecting ear said, in a sibilant whisper, 鈥淭ake thee f* 鈥榓t off in the 鈥榦use of Gawd thee ignorant sod thee.鈥�

The Christmas of 1939 is the only Christmas of the war that I can really remember and that because one of my fellow 鈥榠mmatures鈥� had relatives in Sheffield and he and I were invited to share the festival with them. If was before food rationing had really got going and we were treated to the full gammut of Yorkshire hospitality. Each morning we were awoken by our hostess bringing us tea in bed, not only a cup of tea but also a few biscuits and a banana to keep us going until breakfast. Then, apart from the feast of Christmas Dinner, we were daily presented with a large cooked breakfast, lunch, high tea (a feast in itself) and before we went to bed the sideboard was again dressed with a ham, a pork pie, tongue and an assortment of pickles and what else I can鈥檛 remember. To us this was all a treat indeed because, whilst army food was plentiful and we never during the whole of the war had to suffer the privations of rationing that were visited upon the civilian population, the army cooks managed to make almost literally a dog鈥檚 dinner of good provisions and I imagine the pigs who were fed our leftovers in the form of 鈥榩igswill鈥� did marginally better than we did. The classic example of army cooking was right at the beginning of the war when the sergeant cook in Bedford was appointed to the job because he had experience of mass-catering. In civilian life he ran a fish and chip shop!

The winter of 1939/40 was one of the most severe in Britain for many years and the Drill Hall floor got very cold and hard but we did eventually get mattresses and in the end beds which provided a real luxury. Worst of all was being put on guard duty and I shall never forget sentry duty outside Mexborough Drill Hall in the ice and snow and in particular the seemingly interminable two hours from two 鈥榯il four a.m. when life is said to be at its lowest ebb. There was some light relief on the next shift when the 鈥榢nocker upper鈥� progressed along the small cottages on the other side of the road, tapping on the windows of the bed rooms with a long stick to awaken the men who were on the day shift at the colliery.

It was during this cold spell that we were equipped with proper guns; the 3.7inch (93mm) Heavy Anti Aircraft gun. It was said to be mobile but was the very devil to get off its wheels and ready for action. This did not matter too much in Britain as we were mostly static in sandbagged gun emplacements; usually four guns to a site, which is a 鈥楾roop鈥� of artillery. These guns, unusually for their size, fired fixed ammunition, in that the shell (the projectile) was fixed to the cartridge that contained the propellant (in the form of cordite). Most large guns, like field, medium and heavies, fired separated ammunition so that the projectile was rammed up the barrel followed by the cartridge as a separate operation. The guns that I served were located on the eastern outskirts of Sheffield, at a place called Treeton, and our quarters were in a collection of wooden huts, housed in the bottom of a disused quarry below the gun site. The ground was still deep in snow and I well remember the mad scramble up a flight of icy steps when we were called out in the night. Fortunately it was still the time of the 鈥榩honey war鈥�, before enemy air raids started, and if we were called out it was only as the result of some senior officer鈥檚 macabre sense of humour who thought it would be good for us to be kept on our toes. We were at least warm as the huts each had a coal burning stove which we kept not far short of red hot as our proximity to the coal fields meant there was no shortage of fuel. The water pipes in the hut set aside for ablutions were however frozen solid and for a week or two we had to go outside and fill a metal wash basin with snow and bring in to heat on the hut stove so that we could wash and shave.

By this time I had been given my first stripe and was now a Lance Bombardier. Sewing the stripe on my tunic severely tested my prowess with needle and thread and, as I was later to discover, it was much more difficult to sew one stripe than two because it wouldn鈥檛 easily lie flat. Easiest of all was three stripes and I did have this pleasure as I became a Lance Sergeant before being commissioned. I had by now been trained as a Gun Position Officer鈥檚 Assistant, 鈥橤POACK鈥� for short. It had the advantage that we were for the most part under cover in the Command Post except when we stood outside to relay orders to the guns. Moreover we didn鈥檛 get covered with dirty oil as was the fate of most of the gunners who actually laid and fired the guns and because we were selected as being better educated I suppose we felt slightly superior.

And so came the spring of 1940 followed by the end of the 鈥楶honey War鈥�.

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